THE “AXIS OF EVIL” COVERS UP A MULTITUDE OF SINS

We human beings are grounded in the material, in the nitty-gritty of life, of that which we can grab hold. While we are primarily spiritual beings, the spiritual is too ethereal. We sense it, feel it, but we cannot lay a hand on it and very well cannot conceptualize it. So what we all do is try to materialize the spiritual. We even personify it if we can.

   Take “good” for example, or “goodness”, a spiritual quality. We can define it, of course. But to truly understand good/goodness, we have to make it real. God is good, we say, Francis of Assisi was a good man, exuded goodness in his life. We can do the same for evil. We define it. Then we conceptualize it by personifying it. Osama bin Laden is evil. Hitler was evil. Iraq , Syria and North Korea are the axis of evil, says the President.

   Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Evil is in the eye of the beholder, as is good, definitions notwithstanding. What may be good for me may be seen as an evil, certainly bad, for someone else. Often abortion is seen as a good for the mother but it is not so good for the baby. Yes, there are some evils, some sins that cannot be redeemed by finding or trying to find some good in them: cold-blooded murder, deliberate cruelty, destruction for the fun of it. We know that.

    What we so often and so easily do is set up hierarchies of good and evil: this action is better than that; this action is worse than that. However, we are much more prone to do this when it comes to evil acts. Murder is worse than stealing; stealing is worse than lying; lying is worse than lust in my heart, and so on. We often make these judgments unconsciously. But we all do it.

   Why? We do it in order to cover up and hide behind our own sins. “I may be a liar, but he’s a thief,” we say. “He is a worse sinner than I am.” While we are reluctant to verbalize such statements to others, we certainly make them to ourselves. We make such statements, such judgments, not just to try to cover up our own sins but simply to live with ourselves. As long as we can find someone who is a worse sinner that we, we salve our consciences – and go on sinning.

   We do this as individuals and we do it as a nation. We went to war in Iraq , as an example, because Iraq was/is evil, an axis of evil, said the President, certainly implying that we are not so evil, even good in comparison. But such thinking and acting can and have come back to haunt us – as those horrible pictures of the torture and abuse of “evil” Iraqi prisoners by our “good” soldiers make evident.

   This is not to make a judgment about the war in Iraq . It is simply a reminder that whenever we set up others, be those others individual people, classes or groups of people or even nations as a whole as a criterion on which we judge and measure our own behavior and then act on that judgment, what we do may come back to haunt us. Besides, just because someone may indeed be more evil than we are does not make our actions suddenly good. Evil is evil and it cannot be explained away, covered up or excused by some one else’s greater evil.                                                 WJP